Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
My thoughts returned to the night before.
Had I said something wrong? Was that the real reason he’d left so quickly? Or had something else come up, with Ben or Taryn or Tex, that had required his immediate attention?
I was impressed with myself for managing to keep moving through class as I entertained my curiosity. I considered stopping him after class, but if he was going through something, he knew he could come to me, and it wasn’t my place to pry. Besides, if it was that serious, it would be easier to talk about at H4H over the weekend.
I was hoping things would return to normal on Friday, but he still wouldn’t acknowledge me when he came to class, just took his seat.
Not my usual smile.
Or the glances we’d share during my lecture.
Nothing.
When Saturday came, I stood on the roof, looking out to the road, thinking at any moment he’d arrive to help out, same as usual. But he didn’t come that day, and I didn’t realize just how lonely a build could be without him. Between his no-show and his peculiar behavior in class after our last—what I thought had been—very pleasant discussion over coffee, I decided I needed to address it.
On Monday, as he was heading to the door with his classmates, I said, “Hey, Kyle, do you mind if I talk to you for a second?”
As he approached my desk, I couldn’t read him any better than I’d been able to the week before. Evidently, something was wrong.
“Yeah, Big Man,” he said, sorrow in his tone.
“Just…checking in. Obviously I don’t expect you to come to H4H on Saturdays if you’re not interested anymore, but I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”
“Everything’s fine. I needed the delivery hours, is all.”
As I nodded, his gaze caught mine for what felt like the first time since the bookstore café. I wanted to tell him I knew he was lying and that there was more to his reason for ignoring me, but something felt almost…inappropriate about it. Still, if anything was going on, I wanted to be there for him. Didn’t he understand that?
You’re just his teacher.
But if that were true, why did I have to keep reminding myself of the fact?
He left without giving up more than that, leaving me feeling so empty inside, dwelling on what the hell was wrong with him. And if that discussion we’d had at the bookstore café might have been our last.
No, I refused to believe that.
That it mattered so damn much to me was a problem. I knew it even as I dug through the assignments everyone had turned in at the beginning of class, desperately wanting some answers…hoping for something…
Gertrude’s a terrible mother. She’s supposed to protect her son, but she spends all this time refusing to listen to him, not caring what he has to say. I know you’re going to call bullshit and that I’m just saying this because I disagree with the premise, but I don’t care.
He should have felt that he could go to her, that he could have talked to her about what his uncle had done.
Hamlet fucks a bunch of shit up, but maybe if his parents hadn’t been absolute shits, no one would have gotten hurt.
It went on in this fashion.
Kyle’s responses tended to be thought-provoking and insightful, but this particular assignment seemed little more than stream-of-consciousness ramblings about Hamlet’s mother and uncle. His words were laced with passionate fury and righteous indignation, the entire response suspiciously short, considering the way he usually went on about the beefs he had with the texts.
Had it been any other student, I might have been able to chalk this up to being a lazy response to the play, but his deviated into…something else. And knowing some of the details of his life—about his uncle, the good man who’d taken Kyle in after his family had left him for what the rest of the town believed was his own bad behavior—made me suspect that there was far more behind his words than some pissy sentiments toward Hamlet’s parental authorities.
After sixth period, I gravitated to his desk, taking a seat and rereading his response twice more. I wasn’t going to be able to get it out of my damn mind.
What are you telling me, Kyle?
I had the worst feeling, which prompted me to inspect the Georgia laws on mandatory reporting: “Child” means any person under 18 years of age.
Technically, Kyle didn’t qualify, but regardless, I was certain anyone with a brain and a bit of common sense would have told me I damn well should have treated him as I would have any other student.
I didn’t have enough to go off of, but even if I had, I couldn’t imagine betraying his trust like that.
There was a rattle at my door before it opened.